The present invention relates generally to the field of power generation, and more particularly to the use of hydrogen in power generation.
For centuries, power generation has been dominated by the use of non-renewable resources, such as coal, oil and gas. In the latter decades of the 20th century, concerns began to mount regarding the limits to these non-renewable resources, especially oil. Some have calculated that the world oil reserves will be depleted by the year 2030, and possibly sooner as global demand for oil and its refined products increases.
Concurrent with the concerns over depletion of these power generation resources has been the growing fear of the effects of emissions not only from the use of, but also from the production of, the non-renewable resources. While the debate over the contribution of burning fossil fuels to the phenomenon of global warming rages, there is no question that the production and use of coal and oil are significant sources of air pollution.
The fear of scarcity and deleterious environmental effects has generated growing pressure to develop so-called “alternative” power or energy sources, especially from renewable sources. Thus, significant effort has gone into developing sun, wind and wave power generation systems. Thus far these renewable energy sources have been demonstrated to have value in large scale power generation, such as for supplying electricity to the grid. For obvious reasons, these renewable resources are inadequate for small power supply needs, such as to power a cell phone or run an automobile. For smaller power needs, rechargeable batteries or power cells have been developed and utilized with good success. Of course, these rechargeable electrical sources still rely upon large scale electricity generation, which is overwhelmingly coal or nuclear based.
Beginning in the last third of the 20th century and continuing into the third millennium significant time, money and energy has been devoted to developing so-called “green” sources of power and energy that are renewable and have a much lower environmental impact than their fossil fuel cousins. One proposed solution has been to use hydrogen as a fuel. Hydrogen-fuel cell and hydrogen-internal combustion engine (ICE) technology has been successfully demonstrated for use in powering an automobile. However, many drawbacks inherent with the generation, storage and transport of hydrogen have hampered its wide-spread development and usage. One significant problem has been that it takes a significant amount of energy to extract hydrogen from water. Another problem is that room-temperature hydrogen is difficult to store since it must be strongly compressed in large, heavy pressure-safe storage tanks, or maintained in a liquefied form in cryogenically cooled tanks. In either case, the storage requirements make use of hydrogen in automobiles problematic and in much smaller apparatuses virtually unthinkable.
On the positive side, combustion of hydrogen is perhaps the most “green” power source possible. The byproduct or “exhaust” of hydrogen combustion is water and hydrogen and not the greenhouse gases that are exhausted from combustion of more traditional fuels. Thus, the environmental impact is lessened significantly and any contribution to the global warming phenomenon is nil.
There is a need for hydrogen generation systems and processes that avoid the inherent problems with current technology, namely storage and extraction. There is also a need for a hydrogen fuel cell that can be used on virtually any scale, ranging from powering an automobile to powering a small appliance, such as a cell phone.